WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration may be putting out a fire in Afghanistan, but the dynamite factory is next door in nuclear-armed Pakistan, commented Democratic lawmaker Gary Ackerman this week.
In other words, if President Barack Obama wants to achieve his goal to defeat al Qaeda, the strategic prize is Pakistan and its border area with Afghanistan, a region Obama called the "epicenter" of violent extremism when he announced his new Afghan war policy Tuesday night.
"My constituents keep asking? Is it worth risking the lives of those who respond to the fire in a place that may or may not hold a lot of value in and of itself," Ackerman, a U.S. congressman from New York, told Obama's defense and diplomatic chiefs.
The hard part, said ex-CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, was to get Islamabad to cooperate in the fight against extremists in what is an increasingly complex political climate in Pakistan.
President Asif Ali Zardari's government is teetering and public opinion still staunchly anti-American, albeit less so than under the Bush administration.
Too much U.S. pressure makes Zardari's position even more precarious, particularly with the army and police.
"It is a very delicate balancing act," said Riedel, now with the Brookings Institution think tank. "You don't change Pakistan's strategic behavior very easily. It is not something that will change in the course of months or years," he added.
Source: reuters.com/
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